Regarding Hrothgar and Benchmark

[Kaelk]

I'm gonna highly suggest waiting until Shadowbringers is officially released before you pick up your torch and pitchforks. Yoshi-P himself stated the benchmark had a chance of not even being released this month. More than likely they wanted to release it alongside the live letter, and thus weren't able to get everything they wanted in. Immediately believing what we're seeing in a benchmark is the absolute final finished product is being blatantly ignorant. Now if Hrothgar were fully released with their current lack of options, THEN I'd agree with the disappointment. But until then I'm not going to kneejerk myself off a cliff.

My original hope was that they decided to cut that corner in an effort to get the Benchmark out sooner than later. That hope was dashed when I saw that a number of the facial feature options were tied to the hairstyle the face had. I'm reserving final judgement for the release, but right now, I am rather disappointed in what I am seeing.

Hrothgar got way to many options and features, the fangs, the fur, different tattoos/horns on some faces, tail slider/different tails, etc....

I doesnt surprise me that they had to cut the resources somewhere and I guess it would of been difficult to fix all those hairstyles on that face of Hroth's.
Might just be my opinion, but its fine as it is. I do not want Hrothgar taking more resources and time, rather see them spend on older races.

Then again, female Viera had only their race hairstyles as well, so they might appear later in the character creator?

Hrothgar got no more customization than any other race, and because of the face/hair issue, they got significantly less.

Yes, they have the addition of fur patterns, an option that is covered by 90% of the gear in the game, so it you want to show that off, glamour options are severely limited. The hair color is determined by the fur color, and being able to customize the pattern color has meant they removed the option for hair highlights, so there was a trade-off.

Fangs? There are three options, none, short, or long. The trade off is that there is no "Mouth" option, which every other race has and has four options.

Tattoos are tied to the face chosen, same as all races, no additional customization there.

Horns? That's a face customization option, which Hrothgar have the same number as every other race, many of which are "hair" customization options with the addition of a braid or another tuft of hair.

Tails? Exact same options available as Mi'qote and Au'ra, no additional customization.

Ultimately however, my only actual complaint is the face/hair and that we are essentially limited to two hairstyles. You pick a face, you get hair A or hair B, that's it, maybe a couple options in your facial fatures. As I said above, I will reserve any real displeasure until I see a final product, but as it stands right now, a face and hair combination is the easiest way to create a character that looks different from the others of your race and if those of us wanting to play Hrothgar lose that option, they have limited variety to essentially 8 options for Hrothgar.

Yes, Viera had racial hairstyles only, however, the hairstyles weren't tied to a specific face, leading to a potential 68 combinations of face/hair. Even if you take the fact that some of the hairstyles are just slight adjustments, leaving 9 unique hairstyles, that is still 36 variants. It would also stand to reason that Viera will have the option of vanity rewards and Mog Station items, even if not immediately, eventually. It is also ignoring the fact that Viera have access to Hair highlights, which allows them to further differentiate themselves from the rest of the Viera running around.

[Senn]

I wouldn't call hrothgar unfinished, but the fact that the hairstyles could be locked to the faces is concerning. Perhaps there are more face options for hrothgar we haven't seen yet. Will that be enough though? I don't know how development stuff works, but wouldn't it be difficult to continue making new hairstyles for hrothgar? The devs would have to make hairstyles unique to the face it's going to be locked with. These heads are different shapes and sizes, so each hairstyle would have to be made specifically for the face it will be locked to. How will this work moving forward? Will hrothgar not get new hair at all? Or will the frequency at which hrothgar get new hairstyles be much slower than any other race?

[Cidel]

It might be worth asking the devs in an upcoming interview (or have a community rep ask for us? *wink*wink*nudge*nudge*) what the hairstyle situation is for Hrothgar. It seems probable that their unique hairstyles could end-up being locked to certain faces, but then I'm curious about hairstyles you unlock (or even pay for). The situation presents a few questions about things like lack of a "hairstyle" option or if there's any planned alternatives or future additions.

[TripPsyc]

I want to think this limitation is because of the benchmark, its delay, and I will make a better judgement on them once in the actual character creator. If these stay unchanged I am very concerned with will Jandelaine the Aesthetician be a useless npc for us and is the entire mogstation/special event/rare drop hairstyles pointless?

[reivaxe]

I want to say that these are just the racial hair styles and they decided to lock em at 2 pre face. That's what I assumed anyway seeing how the Viera could easily have most all the reg hair styles that are shared between races yet only have their race's hair styles to pick from to.

Hoping that's the case... would be kinda really shitty if both races I wanna play can't use the hair styles I paid for or earned in game. I want my outrageous pompadour and 70s Afro option ...

[Iscah]

Viera might have more choices for hairstyles, but I think Hrothgar got the better styles in terms of fitting with their overall character design. Several of the Viera styles pay no attention at all to the ear placement of the one race they're exclusive to - long styles parted in the centre and going straight under/through their ears.

I'm not sure how you could do that as a designer. Are the teams that disconnected that the people working on the hairstyles don't get to see it with the ear placement?

[Nestama]

Yeah, Viera ears were pretty much taped on after the hairstyles were done. It's easier to notice if you have your mouse cursor have a dance party on the hairstyle options. Did the same with Miqo'te ears which do suffer the same issue... but also noticed they have subtle changes depending on the hairstyle. That was neat to discover.

[Iscah]

Yeah, the Miqo'te styles at least try to adjust for the ears - some better than others, and they seem to have gotten more slack about it over time.

Also Au Ra, who have a couple of styles that specifically interact with their secondary horns - but then again, those are functionally part of the hairstyle so the one person would have definitely been putting it all together.

[MrKimper]

Eh I think for right now the hrothgar faces as is, for what they do make up for the limited hairstyles, my only gripe is that they're stuck to one fur pattern and we didn't get the wolf head then again i suppose that was just a mis-translation to begin with. Either way I think they look pretty good I do hope they get access to the hairstyles in the game itself rather than just expanded racial hairs.